April

Lawyers Journal

Legal Tech Expo draws more than 150

By Jennifer Rosinski and Kelsey Sadoff

April 2009

Photo by Jennifer Rosinski

More than 150 members of the legal community attended the third Legal Technology Expo on March 20 at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel. The free, daylong tradeshow outlined the latest technological products, services and systems enabling practitioners to make their practices more efficient and organized.

The expo featured dozens of exhibitors and three 45-minute interactive breakout sessions, “How to Improve Your Law Practice: Paperless Essentials;” “How to Improve Your Law Practice: Making the Most of Your Time;” and “Compliance with the New Privacy Regulations.” A bonus hour of programming on “Search Engine Marketing For Law Firms” was provided by LexisNexis.

MBA Law Practice Management Section Co-chair Alan J. Klevan led the “Compliance with the New Privacy Regulations” breakout session with fellow MBA member and section Co-Chair Rodney S. Dowell.

“The new privacy regulations will be implemented in January 2010 and the downsides for attorneys in small and solo firms who don’t implement the regulations are significant,” said Dowell, director of the Law Office Management Assistance Program. “Those who don’t implement these regulations are liable for loss of confidential personal information. The presentation hopefully demystified the new regulations and showed solo and small firm practitioners that this implementation can be done in a reasonable and cost-effective manner.”

Silver sponsor ZixCorp attended the Expo as a vendor for a second time — touting its new service that will assist lawyers in complying with the new e-mail encryption law. “The new e-mail encryption law will affect all business verticals, but specifically, it is very important for the legal community to understand with the upcoming enforcement,” said Dan Shea, channel sales representative for Zixcorp. “We are here to make attorneys aware of the upcoming law and how our service can help them with compliance.”

Attendees were also given 15-minute tips on how to make their practices more eco-friendly and efficient through desktop scanning, document management and PDF options at the “How to Improve Your Law Practice” sessions.

“We provided specific tips geared toward the audience, to the extent that individuals who attended — if they only took three to four tips away from the presentation — would be guaranteed to derive income from work performed,” said Klevan of Klevan & Klevan LLP in Wellesley.

“I attended to see what new technology is out, how to further implement what we are already using and get tips,” said Karen Nowiksi, a paralegal with Quinlan & Sadowski PC.

AgentLegal, which attended the Expo for the first time, created a product to increase efficiency in the legal research process. In the current economy, attorneys have seen an increase in workload because support staff positions have been cut.

“Our product is still in beta version,” said Monica Lanctot, marketing director. “This is our first year attending any tech shows and we wanted to focus on tech-specific shows with an intimate setting so that we could talk to attendees and hear what the potential customer wants. This product was built for the mid-tier firm and it is nice to hear what a lot of solo practitioners want from this event.”